Brouwer, Luitzen Egburtus Jan

(1881–1966)

Dutch mathematician and the founder of mathematical intuitionism . Brouwer's first philosophical work, Leven, Kunst und Mystiek (‘Life, Art and Mysticism’, 1905) argued that logic was derivative from mathematics, and mathematics dependent upon a temporal intuition, in which there is a ‘falling apart of the life moment into two qualitatively distinct things’. This Kantian association between the experience of time and that of plurality was associated in Brouwer with rejection of the logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics, and a constructivist modification of classical mathematical practice. The logical importance of this has become separated from the Kantian elements in Brouwer's thought. Brouwer's writings are translated in Collected Works (1975–6).